"Will has a super bright future, he’s a fantastic teammate," said linebacker Ben Roberts. "He prepares himself that way like he’s the starter."
The Brendan Sorsby saga at Texas Tech obviously made an impression on the team inside the building as much as it did the national landscape of college athletics.
Sorsby was the top-rated recruit in the transfer portal, and was thought of as a needed addition to the Red Raiders with quarterback Behren Morton graduating and his backup, Will Hammond, going down with an ACL tear.
The Texas Tech team and institution showed its support of Sorsby, but now that he's moved on, the team has been very outspoken about its support of Hammond, too. Those close to the program will tell you that, for the last three years, Hammond has been an extremely influential voice in the locker room.
As Hammond works his way back to the field for what can be his first season as the full-time starter, his teammates are all-in.
"Will has a super bright future; he’s a fantastic teammate," senior linebacker and captain Ben Roberts said at Big 12 Media Days last week. "He knows everybody on the team when a lot of guys at a lot of other places don’t.
"He prepares himself that way like he’s the starter."
Hammond is back to throwing, but won't officially be cleared for all football activities until late August, just days before the Red Raiders' first game on Sept. 5 against Abilene Christian.
Still, the redshirt sophomore is ahead of schedule ... so much so that head coach Joey McGuire has confidence that Will could be good to go right now if the team really needed it.
"Will's in a good spot," McGuire said. "If we were playing right now, like if we were getting ready for camp, he would be able to do everything. You can get a quarterback ready differently because he's not going to get hit in practice anyway. We feel good about where he's at."
Hammond's teammates shared an interesting perspective of the mindset Hammond had, even in the midst of his rehab and Sorsby's high-profile recruitment.
"He don’t care who you bring in, he’s gonna be the starter, that’s always been his mindset," said star tight end Terrance Carter Jr. "Even last year, he got into the game, he ended up getting hurt, so we had to go get a QB.
"But we all knew that [Hammond] was our QB1."
Wide receiver Coy Eakin, another veteran leader of the program, said even if Sorsby would've played in 2026 after his temporary injunction, many of the team would've still looked at Hammond as their guy.
"It was kind of like if he (Sorsby) plays, he plays, that’s our quarterback. If not, we’ll move on to Will." said Eakin, who explained that Hammond's recovery has been "consistent."
"Will’s our quarterback now, we’re ready to go win with what we’ve got."
